Last year, my first farming year, I struggled to remember that plants need water. A local came round one day, and I proudly showed him our potato plot and our new garden beds in the field. He looked around...he said...'wheres the water?'. GULP. I looked around, with new eyes on. It was true. The beds were parched, the earth was cracking. GULP. It was still spring, and it had been raining, up till about a week or so prior. It had promptly turned to hot, summery weather, very early. I'd assumed the plants had plenty of spring rain...which they didn't. What a blind spot!
As flakey as this sounds, I used to pretend I was very unemotional - Hard and stoic. I don't think i fooled anyone but myself, but I wonder if that negation of the 'water element' or feeling principle in my psyche affected how i treated the garden.
ANYWAY. This year I'm determined to make sure the plants get enough water. Sprinklers were crazily inefficient last year - we were getting up at 5 am and racing down to move our sprinklers. The heat and dryness evaporated most of the moisture. It felt like we were running to put out fires constantly. Mini soil fires. So the solution this year is drip irrigation, combined with swales for the food forest area.
Drip Irrigation
In early spring I spent a good amount of time working with Dripworks, an online California based drip irrigation company. Though I'd rather shop local, my only real alternative here is the local home and garden store - which caters more to hobby gardeners, and the prices reflect that. Dripworks shipped all my supplies to Montana, 1.5 hours drive away. We've nearly finished setting it up the system. Better than any gym membership, the hours of work laying out hundreds of feet of 3/4 inch, 1/2 inch and drip tape tubing has done wonders for our figures. (I'll show you my biceps if you lay out some more pipe).
Swales
Swales were always a miraculous mystery to me.
I first heard about these 'on-contour' passive irrigation 'trenches' from Jo Pearsall and Bryan Innes on their 2009 permaculture design course in Rotorua, New Zealand. I was awed by the idea that digging some ditches could 'slow down' water and give it a chance to soak into the soil. They showed videos of Australian heavy machinery building massive swales, or talked about doing it by hand. It all seemed confusing and a huge undertaking - either machine or labour wise. Swales barely registered as 'doable'.
But the next time, i was ready. I did a second permaculture course in Minnessotta, USA with Mark Shepard last October. (He's the MAN when it comes to large scale, put into practice, real life permaculture. He has 100 acres in Wisconsin, and is farming it sustainably, applying permaculture AND making a good livelihood for him and his family.) We actually dug a swale for Cathy, our host at beautiful Nature's Nest Farm just out side Minneapolis. I realised it was doable by hand, and also doable by single or double bottom plow. Maureen and I got back from Minessota that October gung ho. - we got out and DUG one 350foot swale by hand, just before freeze up!!! ( It took maybe 5 full days of labour for one person).
Come winter, with snow, melt & freeze conditions, we soon discovered our swale wasn't level. I"m not sure why - perhaps the A Frame I made wasn't up to scratch. We leveled it out by hand (using the eye). We'll see.7 other swales, we dug with our tractor pulling our neighbour Herb's old single bottom plow - a beautiful old, sturdy, traditional implement. It saved a lot of grunt work. Thanks Herb!
Swale Video on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFeylOa_S4c
3 comments:
Girl on a tractor. Sexiest thing ever!
;-)
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